American Enterprise Institute

Since it's been seven months since the Iowa caucuses and it'll be another three-plus years until that hell is fresh again, this is the best time to talk about ethanol.

Just in case you didn't know, ethanol is very popular in Iowa and other corn states, which is why most presidential candidates swear once every four years that they love ethanol so much they'd marry a jug of it if they could. If only for a moment, loyalty to this government moonshine becomes as fraught with political symbolism as a gay wedding in which both grooms refuse to wear American flag pins while declining to stand for the national anthem in support of our troops.

Related "American Enterprise Institute" Articles

Since it's been seven months since the Iowa caucuses and it'll be another three-plus years until that hell is fresh again, this is the best time to talk about ethanol.
Just in case you didn't know, ethanol is very popular in Iowa and other corn states,...

We recently witnessed one of the most remarkable moments of this most remarkable political season. A major politician defended the conservative movement and the Republican Party from guilt-by-association with a fringe group of racists, anti-Semites and...

Do you know the old wheelbarrow joke? It's truly funny only to grandpas and the grandkids they tell it to, so I won't bother with the elaborate setup. For years a factory worker pushes a wheelbarrow full of straw past a security guard on his way out....

A speech by Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York -- the Tuesday beforeThanksgiving -- didn't get the coverage it deserved.
But for political junkies, Mr. Schumer's speech at the National Press Club is a marvel to behold. It is at once one of...

Jonathan Gruber should have been Time's Person of the Year. The magazine gave it to the "Ebola Fighters" instead. Good for them; they're doing God's work. Still, Mr. Gruber would have been better.
Time's Person of the Year designation has lost a lot of...

The first issue of Captain America came out on Dec. 20, 1940. It shows Cap slugging Adolph Hitler in the mouth.
Good stuff, but note the date. America wouldn't enter World War II for about another year. At the time, many Americans wanted to stay out of...

For a long time I resisted the word "torture" when discussing the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used against high-value captives in the war on terror. I don't think I can do that anymore.
The report put out by Diane Feinstein and her fellow...

Nine males were accused of being part of a heinous rape. The alleged injustice fomented a mob mentality. An enraged community wanted to skip any talk of a serious investigation, never mind a trial, and go straight to the punishment.
I'm not talking about...

Reasonable people can disagree on whether racism was involved in the tragic death of Eric Garner. My own suspicion is that this misfortune could have transpired just as easily with a white man resisting arrest and/or a black cop choking him.
And even...

The day after it was announced that Ferguson, Mo., Officer Darren Wilson would not be charged in the slaying of Michael Brown, the president for a second time called for calm. His statement was measured, careful and responsible. He condemned violence...

The European Space Agency's Rosetta project accomplished one of the most impressive scientific feats in our lifetime. They essentially moved a clunky machine from one speeding bullet onto another, by remote control, from 310 million miles away. It's hoped...

In the old Soviet Union, Kremlinologists would read the state party newspaper Pravda not so much for the news it contained, but to glean what the commissars wanted readers to believe the commissars were thinking. The closest we have to that in America...

What day is it?"
"It's today," squeaked Piglet.
"My favorite day," said Pooh.
As a proud member of the "don't just do something, sit there" school of politics, I don't fret much about partisanship and gridlock. Partisanship and gridlock aren't bugs...

There is an enormous amount of whining these days about our ideological debates. This gets the problem wrong. Ideological debates are fought over ideas, but politics is more often about competing stories, or, as the eggheads call them, "narratives."
Much...

Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes is running for U.S. Senate in the great state of Kentucky. She is a woman of conviction, of substance, of principle. "I'm not an empty dress," she insists, "I'm not a rubber stamp, and I am not a cheerleader! I am a...

In news that must have left my friends at the New York Post -- never mind the gang at "The Daily Show" -- with a renewed confidence that ours is a just and beneficent God, the White House has been caught covering up a scandal involving a Cartagena hooker....

Barack Obama had a choice between liberalism and the Democratic Party. He chose the latter and it cost him dearly.
Liberalism, as an ideology, insists that government can do good and great things for the people and the world, if the people running the...

Last Friday, the White House announced an "It's On Us" initiative aimed at combating sexual assaults on college campuses. I'm all in favor of combating sexual assault, but the first priority in combating a problem is understanding it.
That's not...

On Thursday, Australian authorities claimed they thwarted a plot by supporters of the Islamic State to grab random people off the street and then behead the captured citizens on videotape. Australia's attorney general said that the massive raid, the...